Leaving Bayonnais

Last Saturday, I woke up for my last full day in Bayonnais to the sound of rain. Tropical storm Fay was passing through and there was pretty heavy wind and rain for most of the morning. So, my last full day was spent holed in OFCB, with the rest of Bayonnais holed in their own homes. Everything was pretty quiet. And on Sunday morning, I got up, ate my last plate ever of Madame Sabine’s delicious scrambled eggs, and headed over the church for my preaching appointment. I sat behind the pulpit next to Actionnel for well over an hour, through all the pre-sermon proceedings, slightly nervous at the prospect of having to stand up in front of around 250 people. But my main reason for being nervous was fear that everyone would find my sermon really boring. The services are close to three hours long, in a hot, sweaty church, so if a sermon isn’t captivating, people rest their heads on the back of the bench in front of them and take a nap. I hadn’t been able to understand a sermon since I’d been in Bayonnais due to the language barrier, but I’d sort of been able to judge how interesting a sermon was by how many people were napping.

But the time finally came for me to stand up and do my thing, and I immediately realized how lucky I was to have Actionnel translating for me. Actionnel is a very captivating speaker, and everything I said in English came out sounding much nicer in English. And a few times Actionnel added something of his own to something I said, which was perfectly fine with me. The sermon didn’t really have a single theme. It was more just me talking about what Bayonnais has meant to me spiritually, taking a lot of ideas from the book The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning, a book I read this summer which gave me a lot to think about. And I tried to focus everything on the biblical passages Luke 7:36-50 and Matthew 9:9-12.

“As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many collectors and ‘sinners’ came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’? On hearing this, Jesus said, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call for the righteous, but sinners.’”
Matthew 9:9-12

I talked about what it means to be ‘spiritually broken’, something Brennan Manning talks about a lot. Overall, I think it went fairly well. I got a fairly decent number of “Amen”s and “Mmmhmmm”s, which I figure is a good sign. And later, Amilor told me “I really understood what you were trying to say,” which was more than I could have hoped for.

And then I ate lunch, and said my goodbyes, and got in the truck (which was kind of weird as I hadn’t ridden in car since May, or even seen a paved road) and rode the four hour drive to Port-au-Prince. The drive was beautiful, and a little saddening because it reminded me how little I had travelled while I had been in Haiti (not a single beach….). I didn’t even get to see that much of Port-au-Prince, but I felt that I had seen enough to get a good impression of the city. If I could describe Port in one word it would be “unstable”. And poverty was just as present in Port as it was in Bayonnais, but it was a different kind of poverty. It was urban poverty, but not like anything I’d ever seen in Central America. I think if I had spent more time this summer in urban areas, I would have seen a completely different side of Haiti. As we approached the city, we began to see UN tanks with uniformed peace-keeping forces sitting on top holding automatic weapons. But they didn’t really stand out as shocking or obtrusive. They blended in with the environment of Port-au-Prince, and seemed to reflect the essence of the city, in a strange and sad way.

I stayed at a “guest house” in the city that lots of Americans stay at while passing through Port. There were three American couples there with 6 small, Haitian children. They were in the middle of an adoption process and this was their second visit to Haiti to visit their future kids. This time, they were moving the kids from an orphanage in Port to an orphanage in Cayes, in Southern Haiti, where they believed they would be safer. It was weird seeing the interaction between these Americans who didn’t speak any Creole and these kids who didn’t speak any English. These American couples were talking and interacting with these kids just as they would with American children, and there was an air of great cultural awkwardness, at least from my point of view. But I could tell these kids were happy, and these couples loved them even though they barely knew them, which I thought was pretty remarkable.

At the Port-au-Prince airport, I had a long conversation with a Haitian-American woman from New York and she asked me a lot about what I had done this summer. And this was the first instance of many this week that I have found it very hard to give an accurate description of Bayonnais to people that haven’t been there. And I’ve realized that I can’t, and I wouldn’t be able to fully understand something similar if someone tried to explain it to me. This woman, who has visited Haiti many times in her life, found many of the things I told her hard to believe. It has been a little frustrating knowing that I can’t really, fully describe what I experienced this summer to other Americans. It was like being asked by students at OFCB if it is true that many families in the States have more cars than family members. They couldn’t really understand it because it seemed too surreal. But that’s what Bayonnais is. It’s a completely different universe, and being back in the States makes me realize it more than ever. When I arrived in Charlotte, the first thing my brother asked me was “Do you want to go to the movies?” So, after spending 12 weeks in Haiti, I came back to the States and what was the first thing I did? I sat in a movie theater and watched the trailer for the movie Beverly Hills Chihuahua. And I realized someone in Bayonnais would not be able to fathom what I was experiencing, sitting in an air-conditioned movie theater with a giant Coke and popcorn watching a singing chihuahua on a giant screen. It wouldn’t make sense, probably because it doesn’t.

Today, I was forced by my mom and aunt to go see the movie Mamma Mia with them. Seeing Meryl Streep sing and dance to the sounds of Abba should have been reverse culture shock at the max, but I’ve experienced enough culture shock in my life for this not to shock or bother me. Being back in a place where very, very few people know what it means to experience hunger, and education and health care are the right instead of the privilege, is not shocking any more. I’m not bitter any more. But it’s not that Bayonnais has made me jaded to what I see around me. If anything it’s the opposite.

This summer has been the hardest period of my life. I’ve had to ask myself questions that I never dreamed I would have to ask myself. And if I ever go back to Bayonnais, I’d be afraid to stay as long because this summer was just too hard. And if I ever went back, I wouldn’t go alone because it was too lonely. But I don’t regret that I went. Tomorrow morning, I’ll be back at Davidson, and when I see friends that I haven’t seen in over three months, I know I will feel much happier than I would have felt if I hadn’t spent this summer in Bayonnais. Bayonnais has made me more appreciative of what I have and the people around me, more conscious of how I live and how I interact with others. And it’s all because Bayonnais is the hardest place I’ve ever lived. And it’s all because Bayonnais is the most beautiful place I’ve ever lived.

Ah, the last week in Bayonnais. All the awesome things that I will miss about Bayonnais seem to have become amplified over the last few days, and so have all the things I will not miss a bit. It’s been hotter than most days, made worse by the fact that my room’s tiny ceiling fan decided to break off and fall to the ground. The food is becoming less and less bearable, since I have basically eaten the same five or six dishes on repeat since I’ve been here (It’s like chicken parm week at Davidson. That’s just too much chicken parm). And I’m missing the Olympics, which is no fun. But this week has the potential to be the best week of my time in Bayonnais. Now that my days are numbered, lots of people are asking me over to their homes to hang out and talk. So, I’m finally doing what I came here to do, which is spend time with people, and no longer have endless hours of free time. For example, on Sunday I stopped by Amilor’s house to borrow his camera on my way to someone else’s house, and I ended up talking to Amilor for well over an hour. We sat outside his house, which has a beautiful view of the mountains surrounding the valley, and talked about cell phones, and buying rice, and the war in Iraq, and electricity. It was awesome. And later that night, I played in what has become an almost nightly game of rummy at OFCB. Night games of rummy with Jonel, Yevens, Eddy and Iverner, sometimes lasting a few hours, have become very common.

(Amilor's son, Lordyone)

















On Friday, I figured it would be a good idea to check how much money I had with me to make sure I had enough to travel out of Port-au-Prince when I leave. And I found my wallet empty of all cash. Sometime in the last three or four weeks, someone sneaked into my room and stole all my money (which was stowed in a box, atop a closet). A mysterious someone made off with the remaining $500 of my Bonner money (which was going to OFCB anyway to cover room and board for the summer) plus around $20 of my own money. I do not know who performed this dastardly dead, but if I had to guess, I would say: Smog. Apparently this isn’t the first time this has happened. Peter apparently lost around $300 and a friend of his lost about $100 (why nobody cared to inform me of this earlier, I have no clue). I wasn’t really upset by the news, considering I haven’t had any other problems regarding safety since I’ve been here. This barely dents my impression that Bayonnais is one of the safest places I’ve ever been. People here seem to live by an unspoken honor code that rivals that of Davidson College, which is amazing considering the conditions many people live in.

But I was surprised to see how much this news upset people around OFCB. The news got out really quickly (especially since Amilor and Demilsaint announced it at church on Sunday, and went on a mini-tirade about it). $500 is a big deal here, considering that is far more than most people in Bayonnais make in a whole year. Amilor told me “It is because of things like this that Bayonnais is the way it is,” meaning he thinks incidents like this could drive foreign visitors (the main source of funding for organizations like OFCB) away from Bayonnais. And in some ways, he might be right. There hasn’t been a single group of Americans (expect the Wisconsin engineers) visit OFCB this summer because international news of food riots in Port-au-Prince (which were apparently fairly exaggerated) scared a lot of groups off. Actionnel promised them all that things were more than safe, but they still cancelled. On the other hand, Bayonnais is far, far safer than the areas surrounding Charlotte, NC, where most of the groups come from. I mean, theft and violence is a very, very rare occurrence in Bayonnais, an area that has no police force and in which the Haitian government has practically zero influence. To me, that’s pretty amazing. Ironically, it took someone stealing all my money to make me realize how amazingly safe Bayonnais is. And the safety of Bayonnais is not a reflection on the enforcement of law, but solely on the integrity of the community.

(my last trip to the Bayonnais market....)
















My sermon appointment was bumped back to this Sunday, which means I don’t know if I’m going on a road trip after all. I don’t know why I bother writing about things I plan to do, since if I’ve learned anything this summer it’s that everything is subject to change. But hopefully I will get a chance to see a little more of Haiti before I leave, and hopefully I won’t bomb on Sunday morning.

Lightning strikes and bowel movements

I haven’t gotten sick since I’ve been here, but my stomach is making a last ditch effort at trying to make sure I don’t make it through an entire summer in Haiti without getting sick. I wouldn’t call myself sick at the moment, more like on the verge of sick. But last night, I laid in bed listening to the very awkward, uncomfortable churning noises my stomach was making. They were loud enough for me to hear quite easily. So, I am spending most of today in bed (and in the bathroom.....), reading Salman Rushdie and trying to write a sermon. My preaching date has been bumped up from the 17th to this Sunday, so that I won’t be so rushed leaving Bayonnais on the 17th. Instead, Vital and I are going to leave Bayonnais really early in the morning on the 17th, and drive north to Cap-Haitian where there are apparently some really spectacular beaches, and then drive back to Port-au-Prince before nightfall. I’ve kind of regretted having spent this long in Haiti without having traveled more (I haven’t ridden in a car since May), so this little road trip will hopefully give me a chance to see some more of Haiti.

Around the time I first got here, Jonel took me to meet some of his friends about a mile from OFCB. And since then, Jonel and I have gone to visit them every Sunday afternoon just to sit around and talk in English/Creole/Spanish, and the group has steadily gotten larger and I seem to have met everyone’s extended families. But this past Sunday, we didn’t make it to their house. On the way, it became very apparent that something unusual was going on, as we passed hords of people walking very rapidly in the opposite direction towards where we had come from. I had never seen this many people out and about before, and it was even more unusual considering it was starting to rain a little, which usually clears everyone out of the road. So we ended up following everyone to see where they were going (also considering we passed Madame Sabine, who verbally harangued Jonel and myself for walking in the rain and commanded me to immediately walk back to OFCB). Along the way, whenever I saw someone that I knew spoke some English, I would try to ask what was going on, but I got very confusing responses like “There was noise in the sky….” and “something attack the children….”. It turns out a little girl had nearly been struck by lightning and had been somewhat injured since it struck the ground very close to her. And hundreds of people were pouring out of Cathor to go to this little girl’s house to see how she was, and her father was sitting outside the house with her on his lap telling everyone that everything was alright. I had expected to find something a lot worse than someone nearly getting struck by lightning, considering the large numbers of people that were coming out of the woodworks, in the rain, to assess the situation. But, I guess this is just a testament to how much community is valued in Bayonnais. Hundreds and hundreds of people, some living over a mile from this girl’s house, dropped whatever they were doing and rushed over in the rain to make sure that this little girl was alright.

Besides that story, I have nothing new to tell. Nothing really new or exciting has happened in the last week or so. Everything is going as usual: morning walks, classes, reading, eating, sleeping. I am more than ready to be back in the States and back at Davidson, but those feelings aren’t as urgent as they were a couple weeks ago. I only have 13 days left, which is a far less daunting number than 82.

(I have no new photos. But upon looking through some of Aaron’s old photos, I found this wonderful photo of Limareste looking very mysterious…..)

Cookin' it up with Madame Sabine

I have a lot of extra time on my hands, and I had too much time on my hands to begin with. I never really know if students are going to show up or not, so I usually just sit out on the OFCB steps around classtime and wait. If people show up, there's class. If they don't, I go back to doing whatever. But, I haven't felt like my time has been wasted lately. People have already commented on the last post that it is much more important "being" here than "working" here, and that is very true. And this is perhaps best represented in my recent delving into Haitian food, by helping Madame Sabine in the OFCB kitchen. Madame Sabine is often referred to as "James' mom". She cooks all the food at OFCB, always says I'm not eating enough no matter how much food I put on my plate, and frets and frowns whenever I look tired. Madame Sabine does not need me in the kitchen. I think I'm actually slowing the cooking process down by not being nearly as skilled as the master chef, but she likes to have me in the kitchen anyway. So, I fumble around cutting carrots and onions and mostly just getting in the way in the small kitchen, while at the same time getting to know Madame Sabine, getting a chance to practice my Creole, and learning how to make Haitian food.

My tasks so far have mostly involved cutting up vegetables, which I can't do very well, or squeezing lemons/oranges to make fresh juice. But however little I do, Madame Sabine always comes to my defense and tells people that I prepared most of the meal myself. Amilor walked in on Thursday and she started ranting about how much I cooked, while I caught his glance and shook my head. He pointed to a pitcher of lemonade and asked her if I had made it, and she shouted "He washed the lemons in the sink before I made it!!", as if that was the really, hard part. I did learn the proper method for making fried plantains though, which I was pretty pumped about. If I'm ever in charge of meal at the Eco-house next semester and I have some bananas on hand, I will probably blow some minds with my skills.

Today, I went back to the Fort(s). I had nothing better to do, and I figured it's not every day that I have the chance to go exploring French colonial fortress ruins in the mountains of Haiti. I also kind of wanted to see if I could get there by myself, which, looking back, could have ended badly, but luckily didn't. I sat in a little enclave in the walls of the Little Fort, overlooking the Bayonnais valley, and read "White Teeth" by Zadie Smith. It was nice. Going back down the mountains, on the other hand, was the opposite of a pleasant experience. I began to feel way more tired than I had the first time I had gone to the forts, which is saying a lot. And at one point, I got semi-lost and had to ask for directions. Luckily, there was a girl heading towards OFCB that offered to lead the way, but that didn't end so well either. She was carrying a basket of fresh mangoes on her head, and the smell of the mangoes would waft down to me, and I would imagine the warm food and the cold showers and the comfy beds at OFCB. And then I would remember that I was miles from OFCB, drenched in sweat, hungry, and feeling like death, with the mangoes taunting me. But I made it back to OFCB, about 8 hours after I left, and collapsed, reminding myself that I was an idiot.

This morning, I went to meet Pastor Delivrance (pun intended?), a local pastor that I had met on one of my walks and who had asked me to come by his church Sunday morning before the service. Apparently, he knew Peter very well and Peter had attended his services more than once, and I got the impression that it would be sort of rude for me not to stay. But I told him I would only be able to stay for about half an hour, and that I would need to get back to OFCB for church there. That didn’t really work out, and I ended up staying the entire three-hour service, and having numerous awkward moments. For one, at the beginning of the service, there were only two other people in the church. And once more people arrived, the assistant pastor reprimanded all of them for being late, shouting things like “The American arrived on time (pointing to me)! He respects priorities! You, on the other hand, apparently don’t care about spiritual matters!”, and waving his hands in the air. To make things more awkward, the pastor eventually called me up to the front and asked me to introduce myself. And I immediately forgot all the Creole I’ve learned since I’ve been here and managed to say something along the lines of “Good morning. I work at the school. I’m happy to be here.”

But it was definitely interesting getting to place OFCB in perspective of other churches in the area. OFCB is pretty much the equivalent of a mega-church in the States, just because it’s big enough to seat a couple hundred people, and because it has electricity. Pastor Delivrance’s church is about the size of a Davidson classroom, with walls made from just rocks and cement and a roof made of metal sheets. There’s a dirt floor and tiny benches made from planks of wood nailed together to sit on. But none of those things mattered to the congregation, who sang and danced and beat on drums, and showed a lot more liveliness than you can find in most churches in the States. I didn’t understand most of what was said, but from what I understood it was about comparing physical hunger to spiritual hunger. Despite the many awkward moments, it was definitely a unique experience.

The end of an era

Ok, so over two weeks ago, one of the English classes was interrupted by loud Haitian-techno music. It was the start of a soccer tournament at the school that would take place every day during class time, and no one had cared to tell me about it. I was told it would last a week. It lasted two weeks. And so, this Monday, I tried to get the classes up and running again, but that has proved to be a relative failure. 5 students showed up for the beginner class (compared to the 25+ that usually show up) and 2 showed up for the intermediate class. No one showed up for the music class on Tuesday, and 5 students showed up today. I don’t really have any way of getting the word out that classes are back in action, because students come from all over the place. It’s not like I can send them all a mass email telling them classes are starting, or call them all up on their cell phones.

But things turned out a whole lot worse on Monday than I had expected. Amilor informed me that there would be another soccer tournament starting this week, and that there would be more tournaments following that one. So, I have tried to reschedule the classes for an earlier time but that has proven more difficult that I could ever imagine. For one, I have no way of getting the word out about the new times for the classes. Second, many of the students can’t come to class at an earlier time because they work in the mornings. Thirdly, Actionnel has apparently organized a couple weeks of extra, summer courses for the 9th and 10th graders that will start next week. I have no idea if students would be willing to stick around for an English class after already being in classes for 3 or 4 hours. Fourthly (!), no one at OFCB can give me details about when the soccer games will take place, or what these summer courses will be like, or advice about how to get word out to the students about class changes. Basically, I’ve asked a lot of questions and gotten very few answers.

I have 3 1/2 weeks left. Even if everything gets worked out and classes start back as normal, I’ve lost a lot of time and there isn’t that much time left. The 5 or so students that know about the changes say they’ll keep coming, so there will at least be some form of class, hopefully. But the days of packed classrooms are long gone. I have no idea how much work, if any, I will have from now until I leave. So, that’s that.

Race in Bayonnais

A couple weeks ago, when Yvolene and Dasmine were braiding my hair by force, Yvolene told me that I looked like Jesus with my long hair. And then she said that Peter had looked like Jesus too. And that, in fact, all white people looked like Jesus. And since then I have really been questioning how race is viewed in Bayonnais, an area of Haiti that heavily depends on the influence of white Americans.

In Bayonnais, the majority of people are hungry. To eat three meals a day in Bayonnais is an absurd luxury. Most people eat once a day, or maybe once every two days. Many children do not go to school, and the majority do not go to school past the sixth grade. They work from a young age in the fields, even those who attend school. The farther you go up into the mountains, the less likely you will find electricity and running water, which are hard to find even in the heart of Bayonnais. But here come the Americans, well-educated, well-dressed, well-fed, and they stay at OFCB and are given beds and are fed three meals a day. The people of Bayonnais know what there lot in life is. It was the lot of their parents and grandparents and will probably be the lot of their children. I am not trying to say that their lot is inferior or lesser, just that it is different. What they understand as hunger, I do not understand as hunger. And what they understand as wealth, I do not understand as wealth. But seeing healthy, wealthy, white people forces them to place their lives in perspective of lives that are vastly different.

So how do they come to understand race when being black is associated with hunger and poverty and being white is associated with an abundance of wealth? And how do they come to understand race when the only white people they meet are those that provide them funds for food and education and health care? If the clearest distinction between wealth and poverty is race, does this not create an illusion that the distinction exists because of race?

Sometimes when I'm out walking, I'll see one of the students from one of my classes working out in the fields. And more than once, they have seemed ashamed that I have seen them at work. As if it is shameful for the American to see that they are not just students but are also farmers. As if working the earth is something symbolic of their lives, and not mine. For them, I am privileged, and for me to see them covered in sweat and dirt is a reminder of that. But how am I supposed to help them understand that I am not lowering or humbling myself by being here, but that this is a privilege for me? That I am learning much more from their way of life than they ever can of mine?
















Yesterday was the last game of the soccer tournament. And Cathor, the area of Bayonnais I'm living in, won the tournament. And about 300 Cathorians (Cathorites? Cathorines?) rushed the little dirt field at the school where the game was played, shouting and jumping up and down. Try to imagine the excitement someone must feel after winning the Super Bowl, or Wimbledon or something, expanded to 300 Haitians celebrating a teenage soccer match. People love them some soccer here. And now that the soccer tournament is over, I can get back to classes and stop feeling useless.

Moving Boxes

The soccer tournament will not be done until this Saturday. Which means that there won't be any classes for another week. But none of the OFCB people, or even the students, seem to mind that there is a two-week break in class. People just sort of take things as they come here, and aren't bothered by the unexpected. So, hopefully, class will resume next Monday and continue for four weeks before I leave. Meanwhile, I have been trying to organize the "language lab" at OFCB. Some churches from the Charlotte area sent two bus-loads of boxes of books and educational materials/equipment, but all the boxes have just been sitting in the old church building, the building which was supposed to become a "language lab". A church had also sent some really nice listening equipment and cds/books for students to learn English on cd, and the idea for the lab was to have a place where students could go and practice their English outside the classroom. So, I asked Dimilsaint and Amilor if I could take a shot at trying to organize the boxes of stuff and get the lab up and running.

Last Friday, I started going through boxes. Most of the boxes contained stacks and stacks of old elementary-school textbooks that, I assume, are outdated. Hundreds and hundreds of the same textbooks, most of which are probably useless for OFCB (not because they're outdated, but mainly because they suck). Yesterday, Amilor told me that OFCB will probably end up just giving them out to the students in the hopes that they might find them useful. On the other hand, some of the boxes contained very useful books, books that will definitely be helpful for the OFCB students. Like 20+ volumes of an Encyclopedia Brittanica. Or an entire box of French/English dictionaries. So, I spent most of Monday labelling boxes with the type of textbook and moving the boxes to one side of the room to make space for the lab. And yesterday, after having sorted and moved over a hundred boxes, I was told that the boxes would have to be moved elsewhere, as the shelves they are sitting on may not be able to support them. I was reminded of the Bonner spring break trip when one group of Bonners spent an entire day moving planks of wood from one place to another, and then back to where they started. I'm pretty sure everything I have done so far will be undone in the near future, but at least the language lab should be up and running sometime soon. I've pretty much done all I can do, which means I now have absolutely nothing to do until Monday. I am back to feeling relatively useless.

Going through the boxes was actually fun at times. Out of every 10 or so boxes, 9 would be the same, boring textbooks, but 1 would be a suprise! I opened one box to find 40 pounds of beans. Another contained about 200 miniature cribbage boards (I don't even know what cribbage is). Another contained about a million band-aids. Another contained a copy of a "Where's Waldo?" book (which Amilor thought was pretty awesome). But the best surprise of all came when I opened one of the giant boxes and found every wonderful 90's family film that I could ever imagine (on VHS). The selection includes: Matilda, Mrs. Doubtfire, Harriet the Spy, Mulan, Pocahontas, Tarzan, Toy Story 1+2, five or six Olsen twins movies, and many more. So, with these videos, and the crappy old tv laying in the computer lab, and the crappy VCR that Yevens has, my movie-less summer has just become a little more interesting (or at least, nostalgic). Starting tomorrow night (with Jumanji!), I will try to make my way through the box and introduce some people around OFCB to some of the finest cinema America has to offer.